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Cuba, Rand Paul, and a 21st-Century Republican Foreign Policy

Philip Rucker
writes in the Washington Post that presidential
hopefuls Sen. Marco Rubio and Sen. Rand Paul “clashed
sharply Friday over President Obama’s new Cuba policy, evidence of
a growing GOP rift over foreign affairs that could shape the
party’s 2016 presidential primaries.” The debate over U.S. foreign
policy is often inflicted with false claims of “isolationism,” but
in this instance Paul correctly called out Rubio as “acting like an
isolationist who wants to retreat to our borders and perhaps build
a moat.”

Rucker notes that “the emerging, younger libertarian wing [of
the GOP] represented by Paul” may want a different foreign policy
from that established by George W. Bush. Neoconservatives and
allies of other Republican presidential candidates insist that
Republicans have no intention of rethinking the policy of
promiscuous interventionism.

Americans, including
Republicans, are getting tired of policing the world with endless
wars.

As neoconservatives and Republican senators beat the drums for
military action in Syria, Republicans turned sharply against the
idea —
70 percent against in September 2013.

Perhaps most broadly, a massive
Pew Research Center survey in December 2013 found that 52
percent of respondents said the United States “should mind its own
business internationally and let other countries get along the best
they can on their own.” That was the most lopsided balance in favor
of the U.S. “minding its own business” in the nearly 50-year
history of the measure.

And then there was the YouGov
poll in March that showed that “the American public has little
appetite for any involvement in Ukraine….Only 18% say that the US
has any responsibility to protect Ukraine.” Republicans were
barely more supportive: 28 percent yes, 46 percent no.

Americans in large numbers want the U.S. to reduce its
role in world affairs even as a showdown with Russia over Ukraine
preoccupies Washington, a Wall Street Journal/NBC News
poll finds.

In a marked change from past decades, nearly half of those surveyed
want the U.S. to be less active on the global stage, with fewer
than one-fifth calling for more active engagement — an
anti-interventionist current that sweeps across party lines.

…The poll findings, combined with the results of prior
Journal/NBC surveys this year, portray a public weary of foreign
entanglements and disenchanted with a U.S. economic system that
many believe is stacked against them. The 47% of respondents who
called for a less-active role in world affairs marked a larger
share than in similar polling in 2001, 1997 and 1995.

Americans, including Republicans, are getting tired of policing
the world with endless wars. Support for the Iraq war is almost as
low as approval of Congress. Interventionist sentiment ticked up in
the summer of 2014 as Americans saw ISIS beheading journalists and
aid workers on video. But even then most voters wanted air strikes,
not more troops. Here’s a prediction: 13 months from now, when the
voters of Iowa and New Hampshire begin voting for presidential
candidates, Americans will be even more weary of nearly 15 years of
war, and U.S. intervention will be even less popular than it is
now. If it remains the case then, as Kristol says it is now, that
the other presidential candidates are “all in the same
neighborhood” on interventionism and Paul is the only candidate
calling for restraint, then don’t bet against him in Iowa and New
Hampshire.

Of course, foreign policy isn’t often a priority for voters, and
Paul has other pluses and minuses that will affect voters’
decisions. But after 15 years of war, being the only Republican who
wants to avoid further military entanglements looks like a good
position.